Encaminándonos: Américo Paredes as aa Guiding Force in Transcending Borders

EncaminÃ¡ndonos: AmÃ©rico Paredes as a Guiding Force inTranscending Borders

Olga Nájera-Ramírez

Journal of American Folklore, Volume 125, Number 495, Winter 2012,pp. 69-90 (Article)

Published by American Folklore SocietyDOI: 10.1353/jaf.2012.0000

For additional information about this article

Access Provided by University of California @ Santa Cruz at 11/14/12 7:34PM GMT

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/jaf/summary/v125/125.1.najera-ramirez.html

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/jaf/summary/v125/125.1.najera-ramirez.html

Journal of American Folklore 125(495):69–90Copyright © 2012 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

O!"# N$%&'#-R#()'&*

Encaminándonos: Américo Paredes as a Guiding Force in Transcending Borders

Américo Paredes was a proli!c transdisciplinary scholar and an extraordinary humanitarian whose life’s work focused on challenging, crossing, and bridging borders of various kinds. In this essay, I demonstrate that Paredes carved an in-credibly fertile intellectual path that yielded copious theoretical insights and in-spired new generations of scholars to pursue, and expand upon, his groundbreak-ing revisionist scholarship. Noting that his activities in Mexico and Latin America remain relatively unexplored, I also contribute to the scholarship on Paredes by asking, What research projects did he pursue in Mexico de adentro? With whom did Paredes work and interact in Latin America? What was the nature of his relationships with Latin American scholars? Drawing primarily on the Américo Paredes Papers at the Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection, University of Texas Libraries at Austin, I examine the nature and scope of Paredes’s scholarly and personal experiences south of the US-Mexico border.

It is not surprising that most intellectuals of color in the past exerted much of their energies and e+orts to gain acceptance and approval by “white normative gazes.” ,e new cultural politics of di+erence advises critics and artists of color to put aside this mode of mental bondage, thereby freeing themselves both to interrogate the ways in which they are bound by certain conventions and to learn from and build on these very norms and models. . . . It is no accident that the most creative and profound among them—especially those with staying power beyond mere -ashes in the pan to satisfy faddish tokenism—are usually marginal to the mainstream.—Cornel West1

.&/0 12342 #/ # /563!#' of folkloristics and founder of Chicano Studies, Dr. Américo Paredes contributed extensively to the formation of various intellectual trends.2 Growing up along the Texas-Mexico border, Paredes encountered borders of various kinds—geopolitical, racial, linguistic, cultural, and disciplinary. ,rough-out his entire life, Paredes resisted, questioned, transgressed, and bridged borders. Paredes came to perceive the border as a site of cultural convergence, con-ict, and creativity. His constant engagement with borders allowed him to develop a critical double vision that generated copious innovative theoretical insights, many of which

O!"# N$%&'#-R#()'&* is Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Santa Cruz

JAF 125_1 text.indd 69 12/16/11 2:24 PM

70 Journal of American Folklore 125 (2012)

are foundational to current critiques of, and innovations in, anthropological and folkloristic theory and practice. Indeed, many of his scholarly contributions antici-pated the “experimental moment in anthropology” by several decades.3 Nonetheless, many contemporary scholars, particularly those outside of folkloristics and Chicano studies, fail to recognize Paredes and his pioneering scholarship. To better appreciate Paredes and his numerous contributions, I o+er this essay. My principal objective is to examine Paredes’s pioneering cross-border or transnational perspective, focusing in particular on his active engagement with scholars and schol-arship in Mexico and Latin America. However, I begin by providing a brief overview of his most important theoretical contributions. Next, I present a brief biographical sketch to situate Paredes historically and geographically. In the 7nal section, I provide a close examination of the nature and scope of his scholarly research and profes-sional activities in Mexico and other Latin American countries.

Paredes’s Critical Interventions

One of Paredes’s most impressive qualities is the breadth and depth of his knowledge and training. An accomplished journalist, musician, poet, ethnographer, novelist, folklorist, and historian, Paredes mastered various genres of writing and employed a multi-disciplinary approach in most of his scholarship. His ability to write in various registers and to employ a variety of rhetorical styles made Paredes an exceptionally proli7c scholar. In fact, since the late 1940s, Paredes’s writings exemplify the concept of “blurred genres,” that is, the tendency toward genre mixing in intellectual writing.4 But it is Paredes’s cross-border or transnational study of Mexican culture that proved exceptionally productive and insightful. Paredes knew very well that despite the estab-lishment of the United States-Mexico border in 1848, the boundary did not restrict or delimit the constant tra8cking of goods, culture, and people. Paredes ingeniously coined the term “Greater Mexico” to refer to “all the areas inhabited by people of Mexican descent—not only within the present limits of the Republic of Mexico but in the Unit-ed States as well in a cultural rather than a political sense” (Paredes 1976:xiv). Importantly, Paredes’s transnational perspective promoted a more nuanced ap-preciation of the vibrant heterogeneity of Mexican culture within and across na-tional borders. In the United States alone, he identi7ed at least three kinds of Mexican communities: regional, rural/semi-rural, and urban. In his words, these “groups are constantly in-uencing one another at the same time that they are the object of all sorts of in-uences from Mexico as well as from the United States. ,ey also exercise a certain in-uence in both Mexico and the United States” (Paredes1979:9). Framed as part of Greater Mexico, Mexican communities in the United States could now be understood as possessing their own unique and complex cultural, historical, and geographic features, much like the jarocho or huasteca regions, for example, in the republic of Mexico, where members of a community simultaneously maintain two or more identities. Paredes also demonstrated that “mexicanos de afuera” (literally “Mexicans from the outside,” that is, those living beyond the borders of the Republic of Mexico) were active producers of Mexican culture. His concept of Greater Mexico constructed mexicanos living on both sides of the United States-Mexico border as

JAF 125_1 text.indd 70 12/16/11 2:24 PM

active practitioners and originators of Mexican culture. Hence Paredes viewed culture as dynamic, diverse, and -uid. As such, Paredes was among the 7rst to persuasively argue against the then prevailing concept of culture as a 7xed, bounded, homogenous unit, implicitly adopting an “anti-essentialist” stance. Equally important, Paredes’s concept of Greater Mexico allowed us to see Mexican communities in the United States for what they are: a substantial, legitimate and growing, part of mexicanidad. However, as Paredes consistently demonstrated, maintaining a Mexican cultural identity, especially beyond the national borders of Mexico, carries signi7cant political implications. Paredes recognized that an expression of national identity and unity in Mexico o9en becomes an expression of resistance to cultural erasure in the United States (see Paredes 1982). ,us, Paredes’s cross-border perspective proved critical for capturing the complex power dynamics within which Mexican cultural expressions are embedded. As such, he emphasized the importance of context and performance in folklore studies—a move that radically revised the understanding of folklore. As Bauman notes, Paredes o+ered a revisionist de7nition of folklore:

In place of an understanding of folklore as founded on group homogeneity and oper-ating within the boundaries of the group to maintain its social equilibrium, Paredes o+ers a far more subtle and complex picture. Certain elements of the Texas-Mexican repertoire, as noted, are part of the shared traditions of Greater Mexico, but this is only half the picture, for a signi7cant portion of the repertoire, the most distinctive portion, is generated by the stark social oppositions of the border region, a response to di+er-ential—not shared—identity. Moreover, the generating force out of which such folklore emerges is con-ict, struggle, and resistance, and the folklore operates as an instrument of this con-ict, not in the service of systems maintenance. (Bauman 1993:xiv)

Paredes consistently underscored the value of folklore as a record of “the Mexican-American’s long struggle to preserve his identity and a8rm his rights as a human being” (1976:xviii). Note that his de7nition of folklore shares many similarities to what scholars today refer to as “cultural memories,” “uno8cial histories of the sub-altern classes,” or “alternative archives.”5

As one of the 7rst “native” anthropologists, Paredes demonstrated the possibilities for rigorous yet politically engaged scholarship and forcefully demonstrated that academia is an important site for political intervention and activism. First, Paredes challenged the notion of “objectivity” in the ethnographic enterprise by recognizing both the ethnographer and the subjects of study as complex human beings with their own personalities and agendas, operating within circumscribed and o9en multi-layered power structures. He explains:

In the past, the ethnographer was on much surer ground, when his main interests were such “classic” ethnographic chores as taking censuses, mapping out kinship systems or recording overt behavior; but distortion is extremely likely when he at-tempts to interpret feelings and attitudes on the basis of artistic expression, espe-cially if the ethnographer is not su8ciently aware of the kind of behavior taking place and assumes his informants are simply giving him information. In such cases, the ethnographer is likely to end up as the butt of the joke. (Paredes 1977:8)

Nájera-Ramírez, Encaminándonos 71

JAF 125_1 text.indd 71 12/16/11 2:24 PM


Paredes’s valuable insights emerged from his own dissatisfaction with the scholarship on a society and culture that he knew only too well, both as a member of that com-munity and as a scholar. His dual position a+orded him the experience, resources, and knowledge necessary to identify inaccuracies and, most importantly, to o+er productive alternatives. ,at is, Paredes recognized the ethnographic encounter as a site for performance and the manipulation of power by the informant(s) and the ethnographer because of his experience on both sides of the encounter. In this way, Paredes’s own scholarly work in general, and his article “On Ethnographic Work among Minorities” in particular, provide a concrete example that con7rms, indeed pre-dates, James Cli+ord’s idea that “the indigenous ethnographer” may o+er “new angles of vision and depths of understanding” (1986:9).6 Indeed, when Cli+ord wrote this statement, he was not yet familiar with Paredes’s scholarship.7 Signi7cantly, Pare-des always, and astutely, insisted that being a “native” was not su8cient for correcting the problems. He cautions, “the advantage of using ‘ethnics’ as ethnographers is not an immediate issue here, if the ethnics are to receive the same kind of training that has been received by their mentors in the past” (1977:2). By closely attending to the methodological processes employed in the ethnograph-ic encounter, Paredes prudently suggests that ethnographers must also be viewed, and view themselves, as “individuals with emotions and goals of their own” rather than as interchangeable units in a category, in this case “objective” social scientists. In other words, Paredes keenly notes the need for ethnographers to take account of their subjectivity, akin to Haraway’s (1988) notion of “situated knowledges” and Za-vella’s concept of “social location” (1993). In short, Paredes advocated a re-exive approach in ethnographic work, but rather than indulge in confessional disclosures (as some “re-exive” anthropologist have done), Paredes’s insights on re-exivity showed how situating the ethnographer helps to reveal the power relations involved in con-ducting research.

Encaminándonos: Paredes as Leader and Mentor

In assessing Paredes’s scholarship, it is important to keep in mind that he produced much of it before the Chicano Movement, before the second-wave feminist era, and before the establishment of Chicano Studies and Cultural Studies programs. His pres-ence and participation in the academy set the groundwork and created a space for future generations of scholars to pursue and expand. In other words, Paredes “nos encaminó” (literally, he walked or guided us part of the way). Paredes carved out an intellectual path that he hoped, in fact, expected, others to navigate and further de-velop in multiple directions. ,e participants of the double panel titled “With His Pistol in His Hand for 50 Years: Folklore’s Genealogies and the Intellectual Legacy of Américo Paredes” presented at the American Folklore Society 2008 annual meeting amply testify to the various ways in which scholars have embodied and expanded the Paredes legacy. ,e historical, social, and political contexts in which Paredes worked and the many challenges he faced throughout his life merit special attention because his background lends greater insight into Paredes as a humanitarian and as a critical thinker. Born in

JAF 125_1 text.indd 72 12/16/11 2:24 PM

1915 and raised in Brownsville, Texas, Américo Paredes literally grew up on the bor-derlands. Like many mexicanos of that particular time and place, Paredes received a formal education in English from the local public schools while simultaneously receiv-ing another education at home in which Spanish was the dominant language. ,is upbringing positioned Paredes as a fully bi-cultural, bilingual, and well-educated indi-vidual, “bien educado,” in the fullest sense of the word: respectful, knowledgeable, liter-ate, and well-mannered. Upon graduating from Brownsville Junior College in 1936, Paredes worked as a journalist for fourteen years. During that period, he went to Japan on special assign-ment, where he met and married Amelia Sidzu Nagamine, a woman of Japanese-Uruguayan descent, who grew up in Argentina, Mexico, Chile, Panama, and Japan. As their marriage coincided with World War II, the time of Japanese internment in the United States, returning home with his Japanese bride proved di8cult. Despite such racial and political obstacles, however, Paredes succeeded in returning to Texas in 1950 to pursue his education. Within six years, Paredes earned his three degrees at the University of Texas at Aus-tin: a Bachelor of Arts in English and Philosophy and a Masters and PhD in English (Folklore) and Spanish.8 In 1957, Paredes joined the faculty in English and Anthropol-ogy at the University of Texas, becoming one of a handful of faculty of color on that campus. Although Paredes completed his graduate degrees in record time, he did not skimp or skim in his studies. On the contrary, rigorous scholarship became critical to Paredes, especially since he challenged the o8cially accepted wisdom of the time as promoted by his colleagues, particularly folklorist J. Frank Dobie and historian Walter Prescott Webb, “los meros meros” (heavyweights) of Texas scholarship. Remember that when Paredes launched his academic career in the late 1950s, white supremacy reigned in Texas and in academia (Calderon and López Morín 2000:200). ,is was a time when Mexicans were not allowed to get a haircut at (or even permitted entry into) the local barbershops surrounding the University even if that “Meskin” happened to be a fac-ulty member of one of the most prestigious institutions of higher education. Can you imagine what it meant for Paredes to challenge their scholarship? ,e racist and negative characterizations of Mexicans that his colleagues promot-ed absolutely infuriated Paredes. But Paredes responded to their biased portrayals with intelligence, conviction, and wit. He forcefully debunked the degrading charac-terizations through his meticulous scholarship. Working against the grain, Paredes’s goal was not to seek approval of the mainstream scholars but rather to insist on his right to engage them on an intellectual level. And, in the process, Paredes demon-strated that the academy was a political battleground in which scholars could and should tackle issues of discrimination and prejudice. In so doing, Paredes became what Cornel West de7nes as “a critical organic catalyst,” that is to say, “cultural work-ers who simultaneously position themselves within (or alongside) the mainstream while clearly aligned with groups who vow to keep alive potent traditions of critique and resistance” (West 1990:33). As literary critic Norma Klahn asserts:

Paredes (1958) e+ectively re-members a community by remapping a territory and retrieving a memory of lost, unheard stories that had been erased, denied or made


JAF 125_1 text.indd 73 12/16/11 2:24 PM


invisible. His decolonizing work represents that of the previously settled Spanish/Mexican communities whose long history has been defaced, absent from history textbooks and from the discourses of Anglo-Euro nationalist ideologies.9

In fact, since the 1848 War, Mexican Americans had voiced persistent critiques of their treatment as second-class citizens. ,ese works marked in lived experience a space of resistance, and a collective memory bank. ,e work of Américo Paredes in the 1950s was a direct a+ront to traditional Texas historians and opened the way for a critique of internal colonialism addressing the racism, not only against the “colonial subject,” but against those of the diasporic Mexicans who indefatigably continue to migrate to the US for political or economic reasons. (Klahn 2003:115)

I had the privilege of working with Dr. Paredes during my graduate days at the University of Texas during the early 1980s. Due to his illness, he entered the stage of semi-retirement early on but continued to teach a few courses. By the mid-eight-ies, he stopped teaching altogether but continued to hold o8ce hours on a weekly basis. I took full advantage of this time. It was then that he shared many stories with me: about the obstacles he faced in launching his career; the multiple careers he had prior to becoming a university professor; how he almost didn’t attend college; the di8culties he experienced 7nding the right tone and rhetorical style for his schol-arly rebuttals; and even how he negotiated his family obligations throughout his career. He candidly expressed both his regrets and his successes and o+ered sage words of advice and encouragement. To a young graduate student who chose to integrate family and marriage with my career—against the advice of some professors and virtually all graduate students—Paredes embodied an alternative in academia that seemed much more appealing and worthwhile. What made Dr. Paredes such a special scholar and humanitarian was his connection to and participation in the “real” world. He chose not to be “an ivory tower scholar” consumed by his scholarship but rather an intelligent individual whose multiple inter-ests and concerns were re-ected in his scholarship. Integrating the artistic, intellectual, social, and personal domains, Dr. Américo Paredes presented a model of another ap-proach to academia. He not only excelled as a researcher and teacher, but also as a mentor and role model whose work and politics continue to inform my own work in multiple ways. In my own scholarship, I have studied charreadas (Mexican rodeo), folklórico dance, música ranchera, festival, and gender—topics and themes that Paredes apparently did not focus on in his own research. Yet, time and again, as I begin investigating the lit-erature on my topic, I 7nd that Paredes has indeed made a signi7cant contribution to my research. Take for example, my work on charros (Mexican cowboys). Paredes wrote a brilliant piece, “Luis Inclán: First of the Cowboy Writers” (1960) that proved to be foundational for my essay “Engendering Nationalism” (Nájera-Ramirez 1994), and he published an essay on machismo (1967) that pushed me to probe the topic of masculin-ity. ,at is but one example of the way in which Paredes continues to inform my research. His concept of Greater Mexico, however, has been particularly enriching with respect to my own scholarly activities. My interest in Mexican transnational expressive culture goes back as far as I can remember. Growing up in the United States, I was very aware that my cultural roots were in Mexico because my mother took every opportunity to

JAF 125_1 text.indd 74 12/16/11 2:24 PM

reinforce this notion. I recall many occasions when she would tell me about a par-ticular holiday or custom. For example, she might be ironing in the kitchen when suddenly she would look at the almanaque (calendar) hanging on the kitchen wall and announce that it was el 20 de agosto (the twentieth of August), the feast day of her hometown of San Bernardo, Durango. Even if I didn’t ask “¿y cómo lo festejaban?” (how did you celebrate it?), she would proceed to tell me about the discursos (speech-es), the carerras de caballos (horse races), and her favorite, los bailes (the dances). Such were the typical interactions I had with my mother during my childhood that stimu-lated my interests in vernacular expressive forms practiced by mexicanos living in the United States and Mexico. And it was not just my mother’s wistful cultural memories that captivated my inter-est and imagination. Because my mother’s parents and her eight siblings continued to live in Mexico, my nuclear family had the opportunity of going to Mexico on several occasions. ,e experience of actually traveling to Mexico and visiting with my relatives had a profound e+ect on me and the ways in which I perceived myself. Born, raised, and educated in the United States, I nonetheless grew up knowing that I was a mexicana. In my community, most people considered my family as Mexican because we spoke Spanish at home and ate Mexican food (tortillas, beans, and chile) on a daily basis. But interacting with my relatives in Mexico provided me with a di+erent frame of reference for my Mexican identity. I was part of something bigger, older, and stronger than I had realized. Mexico and its cultures, people, and history did not end at the Rio Grande, as I had been taught in my formal education. Instead it preceded the border and ex-tended well beyond it. And I was living proof of this fact. I truly could not conceive of myself without considering my extended family on both sides of the border. I did not have a word for this transnational reality until much later in my life (1981) when I entered graduate school at the University of Texas. During my 7rst semester, I enrolled in two classes taught by Dr. Américo Paredes: a course titled the “Folklore Core Course,” designed for graduate students in Anthropology and English, and an undergraduate course entitled “Introduction to Greater Mexican Folklore.” His con-cept of Greater Mexico seemed so commonsensical that I am rather surprised some-one did not coin the term even earlier. But then again, the genius of Paredes’s schol-arship was precisely his ability to make incisive interventions available for general consumption and to make them seem so self-evident. Greater Mexico has expanded signi7cantly since Paredes 7rst developed the concept. Over the past 79y years, we have witnessed an increased movement of people and cultures within and across national borders.10 As a result, regional expressive forms are becoming more widely known beyond their place of origin. Localized traditions from Mexico such as the Guelaguetza, the charreada, and danzas are springing up in new cultural environments throughout the United States, and can now be found in places such as New York, Georgia, Arkansas, Washington DC, and Kentucky. Today, more than ever, it is clear that despite multiple neo-conservative campaigns and strat-egies (assimilation, English only, heightened militarization of the border), Mexican culture does not stop at the border. ,is fact forces us to rethink issues of identity, citizenship, and nationalism. Paredes’s concept of Greater Mexico engenders a cross-border perspective that allows us to highlight and examine the ways increased glo-


JAF 125_1 text.indd 75 12/16/11 2:24 PM


balization and migration problematize the modern nation-state con7guration.11 As Ramon Saldívar so eloquently writes:

Inventing the idea of Greater Mexico as an imaginary social space consisting in transnational communities of shared fates, Paredes allows us to make sense of the new geographies of citizenship in an era of emerging globalization of capital with its intensi7ed -ow of ideas, goods, images, services and persons. . . . [Greater Mex-ico] represents a far more complex imaginary site for the emergence of new citizen-subjects and the construction of new spaces for the enactments of their politics outside the realm of the purely national. (Saldívar 2006:59)

Importantly, the concept of Greater Mexico also brings cultural, political, economic, and social di+erences into sharp relief. ,at is to say, tensions and contradictions concerning gender and class, national and cultural identities, crosscut this transna-tional Mexican community in multiple, and sometimes, subtle ways. Chicanos who have spent time working in Mexico know very well that many Mexican nationals o9en see us, at least initially, as inferior, particularly in terms of class, social status, or linguistic ability. Such a bias is particularly pronounced among middle-class Mex-ican professionals. Always one to speak his mind, Paredes highlighted this very point in his acceptance speech for the Orden Mexicana del Aguila Azteca, awarded to him in Austin, Texas, on November 20, 1990. To appreciate the irony, let me underscore that Order of the Aztec Eagle is the highest honor awarded by Mexico to recognize foreigners or non-Mexicans for their humanitarian services and for their e+orts to preserve Mexican culture. Evidently, the irony was not lost on Paredes, for in his ac-ceptance speech, he proclaimed that this award was “unexpected.”12 He explains, “,ere are others who deserve it more than I for having made of their lives a constant struggle to better the economic and intellectual condition of our people” [emphasis mine]. He continues:

And we, the “Mexicans living on the other side” as we are colloquially known, have existed since 1848. And for the better part of this period of almost a century and a half, we Mexican Americans have been objects of scorn, of social and economic discrimination—of abuses that sometimes have culminated in legally sanctioned murder.

He pointedly adds:

[W]e Mexican Americans have lacked, until very recent time, the moral support of Mexican intellectuals. ,at is something we have rarely had. Not that we have been invisible to them. We have been much too visible to several generations of Mexican intellectuals who would have been happier had we never existed.

For emphasis, he adds the following case in point:

During the second decade of the present century, while the rural police of the State of Texas was butchering hundreds of defenseless Mexican peasants in South Texas,

JAF 125_1 text.indd 76 12/16/11 2:24 PM

José Vasconcelos was busy branding us as “pochos” because of the way we spoke Spanish and “barbarians” because we liked (and still do) to roast our beef over an open 7re.

He also criticizes Octavio Paz’s characterization of the pachuco as “impassive and sinister” noting that “the pachuco was an essential stepping stone for the appearance of the ‘Chicano’ among Mexican American youth.” Paredes continues:

And, through it all, they have not ceased to meet their obligations as American citizens. In the four major wars that—to date—the United States has taken part during this century, Mexican Americans have played a major role.

He concludes his speech stating:

I am North American. Nonetheless, my ancestors—who colonized what is today the south of Texas in 1749—bequeathed me a deep a+ection for Mexico and her culture. It is then a double honor for me to have been awarded the Order of the Aguila Azteca. Muchas gracias. (speech transcript is from papers in an anonymous private collec-tion)

His comments to and about Mexican intellectuals give us a rare glimpse of the social and political circumstances that Paredes personally encountered south of the border. Notice that he identi7es as a mexicano, and that he rejects the paternalistic and elit-ist attitudes and negative characteristics that Mexican scholars and intellectuals have attributed to Mexicans living north of the United States border. And notice also that he takes this opportunity to deliver a critical message to the Mexican o8cials. Re-sponding to Liberal Arts Dean Standish Meacham who congratulated Paredes on his speech,13 Paredes wrote, “I am glad you liked it. Our visitors from Mexico, I believe were not completely happy with my remarks. But there were certain things that I needed to say, so I said them” (letter to Meacham, 20 December 1990; Paredes Papers, box 57, folder 6).14

“Down Mexico Way”: Mexican Scholars and Scholarship

Growing up as a resident of the border, Paredes crossed the border on a regular basis throughout his life. For border folk, a simple walk or drive across the border to buy groceries or visit relatives was an everyday occurrence. Going deep into Mexico, however, was another matter altogether, especially in the 1950s and 1960s when trans-portation and communication were problematic and limited. As an advocate of transnational intellectual exchange and research, Paredes’s schol-arly activities extended into México de adentro (Mexico within the boundaries of the Mexican republic) as well as other Latin American countries, including Panama, Brazil, Chile, and Argentina.15 One of the most valuable sources for investigating this aspect of Paredes’s work is in the extensive correspondence he maintained with his wife Amelia, his brother Amador, and the innumerable scholars with whom he col-


JAF 125_1 text.indd 77 12/16/11 2:24 PM


laborated or otherwise engaged. ,ese letters are also priceless for better understand-ing the personal and professional agonies he endured and the many sacri7ces he made to advance his work. A hallmark of Paredes’s approach to life was an ability to 7nd humor in his daily struggles and experiences. In a letter to his younger brother, Amador, dated Septem-ber 6, 1959, for instance, Paredes jokingly reports: “Have been back to the doctor, and beginning last ,ursday I started taking shots for allergies and colds. His bills are something that I need some shots for aunque sean de tequila (even if they are shots of tequila).” In another letter, Paredes tells Amador that he delivered a paper in Mex-ico City at the joint sessions of the various professional American and Mexican as-sociations. He notes wryly:

I read something on “El folklore y la Historia” in Spanish, to the great surprise of everyone present. It seems that everyone is surprised that I can speak Spanish and equally surprised that I teach English; so I suppose we mexico-tejanos are not sup-posed to speak either English or Spanish. (letter to Amador Paredes, 3 January 1960; Paredes Papers, box 2, folder 10)

In the extensive letters he wrote to his wife, he frequently mentioned severe traveling conditions, the weather, and his illnesses, and he constantly discussed how much he missed his family. He also commented about the people he met and what he accom-plished or learned on a particular day, and he raised other matters regarding his re-search. For example, in 1962, Paredes wrote to Amelia about his travels to Monterrey, Durango, Mazatlán, Guadalajara, Pátzcuaro, and Mexico City. ,e purpose of this particular trip was to conduct research on folklore and popular culture in Mexico with the support of a Guggenheim Fellowship. In his letters, Paredes mentions meeting several prominent Mexican scholars including Vicente T. Mendoza, Virginia Rodríguez Rivera, Gabriel Moedano, and Daniel Cosíos Villegas. His letters also provide great insights on the skill and diplomacy Paredes employed to negotiate the tensions, dif-ferences, and warmth he experienced in dealing with these scholars. According to Paredes, Vicente T. Mendoza was “the major single in-uence in the development of modern folklore studies in Mexico” (Paredes 1965:365). Trained 7rst as a musician, Mendoza began studying the regional music of Mexico in 1927 while working for the National Forest Service. In 1938, he co-founded and became 7rst president of the Sociedad Mexicana de Folklore (Mexican Folklore Society). Togeth-er with his wife, Virginia Rodríguez Rivera, he also founded the 7rst Mexican School of Folkloric Study. Like Paredes, much of Mendoza’s scholarship focused on corridos. According to Paredes, Mendoza’s seminal volume titled El romance español y el cor-rido mexicano (1939) was “his 7rst major folklore work and 7rst serious study of corrido music” (1965:364).16

Paredes and Mendoza established a cordial relationship, but they never became intimate friends, nor did it appear that Mendoza appreciated Paredes’s scholarship. In a letter to Amelia, Paredes notes that he spent six hours at Mendoza’s house perus-ing his personal library. Speaking of Mendoza, he writes:

JAF 125_1 text.indd 78 12/16/11 2:24 PM

He is genuinely glad to see me and o+ered his cooperation, but the truth is that he has no sympathy or enthusiasm for what I am doing. He is not interested in jokes, is shocked by the dirty ones, claims to know no people who tell them, and that he knows no folklorists in the provincia (region). (letter to Amelia Paredes, 6 November 1962; Paredes Papers, box 1, folder 5)

An avid collector, Mendoza published extensively on Mexican folklore. ,e quality of his scholarship, however, revealed “a tendency toward quick and broad generaliza-tions” (Paredes 1965:364). His published reviews of Mendoza’s scholarship show a struggle on Paredes’s part to commend Mendoza for his accomplishments despite the serious -aws in his scholarship that included “inadequate data from his informants, the ‘improvements’ or collation of texts, the ‘correcting’ of popular speech, and the coupling of texts and tunes from di+erent sources” (Paredes 1965:364). Still, Paredes generously credited Mendoza scholarship on the corrido for clari-fying that the Mexican defeat in the war with the United States did not break o+ its corrido tradition as Merle Simmons asserted.17 A9er Mendoza died on October 27, 1964, Paredes wrote his obituary, characterizing Mendoza as possessing a “keen and indefatigable mind.” He concludes: “For all of us who knew him, his death brings a sense of personal bereavement; for his country it is a national loss” (Pare-des 1965:365). Virginia Rodríguez Rivera, co-founder and secretary of the Folklore Society of Mexico, is another renowned Mexican folklorist with whom Paredes engaged during the early 1960s. Her work covered many topics, including music, foodways, and folk-tales. She also researched women and published a book titled Mujeres folkloristas that focuses on Spanish-speaking female folklore researchers and includes a chapter on Mexican women engaged in folklore research. Rodríguez Rivera collaborated on various projects with Mendoza during their marriage and continued to serve as sec-retary of the Folklore society a9er their divorce. Paredes appreciated her as a re-spected scholar in her own right, but in a letter to Amelia, he also reveals a compas-sion for her as a person:

[S]he still seems to love the old guy and to feel lonely without him. . . . One of the reasons they broke, she told me, was that she didn’t think his mother was an “Anda-lusian” type. . . . “I held her in high regard but I couldn’t say she was an Andalusian type.” And then she said, “Y lo necesito mucho todavia” (And I still need him very much). (7 November 1962; Paredes Papers, box 1, folder 5)

Paredes had the opportunity to interview her at her home, although he notes that “she collected very little on what I am interested in.” Paredes continued to maintain a collegial relationship with Rodríguez Rivera, visiting her regularly when he traveled to Mexico, until her death on August 24, 1968. ,ese two examples demonstrate that Paredes cultivated personal and profession-al relationships with these scholars: he was ready to take them on as intellectual equals. ,at included examining their work critically while preserving the personal bonds between them.


JAF 125_1 text.indd 79 12/16/11 2:24 PM


It was Gabriel Moedano Navarro, student of Mendoza and Rodríguez, with whom Paredes established the strongest ties. Paredes considered Moedano to be the most promising folklorist in Mexico. In a letter to American folklorist Richard Dorson, he wrote:

I think you would be doing the cause of folklore a very good turn by encouraging this young man in any way possible. (He is really young, in his late 20s.) Moedano is the only truly professional folklorist that I know of in Mexico today. If we could build him up in the eyes of the o8cialdom back in Mexico, he may have a chance of developing folklore studies in his country. It was partly with this in mind that I in-vited him to come to Texas this semester. (letter to Richard Dorson, 29 March 1968; Paredes Papers, box 4, folder 7)

In 1968, Moedano accepted Paredes’s invitation to teach several courses on Mexican folklore narrative and Mexican arts and cra9s at the University of Texas in Austin. ,e exposure and credibility Moedano received through this exchange was palpable. A9er his visit to the University of Texas, Moedano received invitations to some of the 7nest folklore programs, including the University of California at Berkeley. Over the course of Moedano’s professional career, he maintained a strong connection with Paredes. In the late 1990s, I met Moedano at a conference in Oaxaca. He spoke highly of Paredes, noting how much he appreciated his guidance and support. Moedano passed away on January 23, 2005. Daniel Cosío Villegas is perhaps the most distinguished scholar with whom Pare-des interacted in Mexico. Cosío Villegas merits special attention because he shared many of Paredes’s characteristics—that is to say, he was exceptionally well educated and politically active throughout his career. An accomplished scholar, Cosío Villegas received bachelor’s degrees in both Arts and Letters from the National Preparatory School, a law degree from Mexico’s National School of Jurisprudence, and an exten-sive post-graduate education that included studies at Harvard, the University of Wis-consin, Cornell University, the London School of Economics, and the École Libre de Sciences Politiques in Paris.18

Like Paredes, Cosío Villegas published extensively in various disciplines. Cosío Villegas made substantial contributions in economics, international relations, and political science, but his most noteworthy achievement was the publication of the monumental ten-volume Historia Moderna de México. He wrote 7ve of the ten volumes in the series and supervised the group of young Mexican researchers who wrote the other 7ve tomes. Cosío Villegas not only created a monumental scholarly work, but, like Paredes, he helped train a whole generation of scholars. A9er the 1968 student demonstrations in Mexico, Cosío Villegas le9 government service and began writing a regular column in Excélsior, one of Mexico’s leading newspapers, and published a series of popular books on the Mexican political system. He and Paredes participated in various conferences and taught at the University of Texas at the same time. ,e most notable quality that Cosío Villegas shared with Paredes was his character of integrity and his work for human justice. His obituary described him as “persona carismática, humana y que dentro sus ideales se manifestó contra las injusticias que los

JAF 125_1 text.indd 80 12/16/11 2:24 PM

gobiernos provocan a grupos marginados de nuestro país” (a charismatic and humane person, who devoted himself to 7ghting against injustices by the government to mar-ginalized groups of our country) (Instituto Latinoamericano de la Comunicacion Educativa 2004). Echeverría, President of Mexico (1970–6), praised him as an “hon-est and courageous intellectual and teacher” (Encyclopedia of World Biography 2004). He continued in this role of critical essayist until the time of his death in 1976. Cosío Villegas published American Extremes (1964), translated by Paredes and published by the University of Texas Press. Another Mexican scholar who merits special mention is Axel Ramírez Morales, founder of the only Chicano Studies Department in Mexico at the Universidad Na-cional Autónoma de México (UNAM). Ramírez received a master’s degree from the Escuela Nacional de Antropología e Historia (ENAH) and entered the doctoral pro-gram at the Centro de Investigaciones Superiores del Instituto Nacional de Antrop-ología e Historia, Mexico City, Mexico under the mentorship of Nicholas Hopkins, who was then serving as co-director of the Linguistics Program. Before Ramírez completed his studies, however, his mentor accused him of plagiarism and expelled him from the program. In a letter to Dr. Paredes dated May 12, 1980, (Paredes Papers, Box 67, folder 5), Ramírez complains that when he spoke to Mexican anthropologist Gullermo Bon7l Batalla about this matter, Bon7l responded by labeling Ramírez an anglophobic who was nothing more than “un chicanito pobre e iluso” (a little poor and gullible Chicano). As a result of this outrageous situation, Paredes invited Axel and his wife Patricia Casanova (who was simultaneously pressured to terminate her research position in Pátzcuaro) to enroll in the graduate Folklore Program at the University of Texas. Ramírez and Paredes established a very intimate relationship such that Ramírez (and his wife Patricia) referred to Paredes as “Papá Américo,” a term several of the Chicana graduate students at University of Texas, employed in reference to Dr. Paredes. ,e Ramírez case o+ers an excellent example of the way Paredes sought to provide a safe haven and forum for marginalized scholars to con-tinue and expand their work. During the 1980s, Mexican ethnomusicologist Arturo Chamorro from Michoacan enrolled in the graduate program of Ethnomusicology at the University of Texas and took various courses with Dr. Paredes. Chamorro had met Paredes previously at the Society for Ethnomusicology’s 22nd Annual Meeting held in Austin, Texas, in 1977. In 1983, Chamorro and Axel Ramírez dedicated their co-edited volume on Mexican popular culture, Sabiduria Popular, to 7ve major folklore scholars, including Vi-cente Mendoza, Virginia Rodríguez Rivera, Fernando Horcasitas, Henrietta Yurch-enco, and, of course, Américo Paredes. In their dedication, Chamorro and Ramírez state that Paredes, who was raised and educated in a bilingual and bi-cultural envi-ronment, maintained strong ties with Mexico and worked to motivate new generations to cultivate a Mexicanist consciousness in the United States and to appreciate Mexi-can cultures. ,ey conclude by stating:

[D]ebemos al maestro la sistematización y classi7cación de la narrativa mexicana y la formación de una nueva escuela del folklore o de la ciencia del folklore en su contexto social, politico y cultural, sobre el mexicano y su sabiduria popular.


JAF 125_1 text.indd 81 12/16/11 2:24 PM


(We are indebted to Dr. Paredes for establishing a new school of folklore that exam-ines Mexican popular knowledge in its social political and cultural context.)(Chamorro and Ramírez 1983:366)

Chamorro is currently Professor of Music at the University of Guadalajara. ,ese aforementioned scholars represent only a part of the larger group of intel-lectuals with whom Paredes worked in Mexico. Nonetheless, they provide us with a general sense of the kinds of relationships Paredes experienced. Another way in which Paredes engaged scholars south of the border was through his publications. ,e productivity and quality of Paredes’s work within Mexico is perhaps best re-ected in his book Folktales of Mexico (1971). Paredes edited this volume, translated the tales, and in the process, contributed signi7cantly to the classi7cation of the Mexican narrative. His introduction to the book is particu-larly noteworthy for it reveals Paredes’s mastery of Mexican folklore scholarship. He writes a detailed overview on the history of folklore scholarship in Mexico from the conquest to the 1960s that assesses the work of Mexican and non-Mexican scholars and highlights the theoretical approaches to folklore that they employed, and he also neatly maps out the historical trajectory of thirty-seven folklore orga-nizations. To date, no scholar on either side of the border has revised or updated Paredes’s overview.19

,at Paredes chose to also publish extensively in Spanish solidi7ed his engagement with a broader Latin American audience. In fact, some of his work appeared 7rst in Spanish and later in English. His scholarship appeared in special anthologies as well as leading journals and periodicals, including Folklore Americano, a journal sponsored by Instituto Panamericano de Geografía e Historia, committed to helping folklorists of the American continents form a network through the publication of serious con-tributions; Folklore Américas; Journal of Inter-American Studies; Logos: Revista de la Facultad de Filosofía y Letras de la Universidad de Buenos Aires; and Cuadernos del Instituto Nacional de Antropología. As noted above, Paredes also published scholarly reviews of many Spanish-language publications, thereby bringing the Latin American scholars and their publications to the attention of English-speaking scholars. In fact, in his own publications, he made frequent mention of Latin American scholars and their scholarship. ,is is but one way in which Paredes served as an interlocutor between Latin American and United States folklorists. A telling example is his article titled “Concepts about Folklore in Latin America and the United States” (1969) in which he reports on the 37th Inter-national Congress of Latin Americanists held in Argentina in September 1966. He notes, for example, the conspicuous presence of a United States folklore delegation composed of well-known American folklorists but including few specialists on Latin America. He pointedly calls attention to the exclusion of major 7gures in folklore study from Argentina, the host country. He also outlines the major di+erences between United States and Latin American folklore scholars regarding the concept of folklore. Paredes observes that Latin Americans generally view the United States folklorists as “rank empiricists, short on theory, who know little discipline or method in their re-

JAF 125_1 text.indd 82 12/16/11 2:24 PM

search,” while North American folklorists view the Latin Americans as “authoritar-ian and anti-democratic.” Paredes’s critical point is that despite the di+erences between the two groups, the fact remains that Latin Americans, who are o9en multi-lingual, have kept abreast of current folklore theory and know more about folklore scholarship in the United States than scholars in the United States know about Latin America folklore scholarship. He ends the article by encouraging more engagement between the United States and Latin American folklorists. His work in translating and publishing Latin American scholarship contributed signi7cantly to this e+ort. Paredes o9en wrote a prologue or preface to introduce and contextualize Latin American folklore scholarship for the English-speaking scholars. His work in translating and publishing scholarship by Latin Americans presented Paredes an opportunity to engage other prominent scholars, including Brazilian folk-lorist Paulo de Carvalho-Neto, Manuel Dannemann Rothstein from Chile,20 and Ar-gentinean scholars Julián Cáceres Freye and Augusto Rául Cortázar. ,e relationships he established with these scholars reveal important details about Paredes: his ability to write elegant prose in Spanish, the meeting of minds and hearts; and the tensions that Paredes experienced. Like Américo Paredes, Carvalho-Neto earned a doctorate in literature, produced outstanding scholarships in the social sciences, and developed a reputation for his wit and humor. In her analysis of Carvalho-Netos’s novel Mi Tío Apahaualpa, literary critic Clementine Rabassa comments that he “has succeeded in creating a paradoxi-cal work which is exceptionally comical but whose main theme is involved with the most serious concern of Latin American writers since the conquest—the plight of the impoverished masses” (1979:34). ,eir shared interests and talents helped Paredes establish a long professional relationship with Carvalho. Indeed, the Paredes Papers archive contains correspondence between these two scholars from 1966 to 1975. In a letter dated December 23, 1966, written by Dr. Paredes to Carvalho-Neto, he ex-presses the joy he experienced in seeing Carvalho at the Congreso de Americanistas held in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He notes that he was especially touched that Carv-alho went to the airport to say good-bye to Dr. Paredes. On February 12, 1968, Carvalho wrote to Paredes to report that he had been dismissed as Cultural attaché to Ecuador in 1967 and his outrage at being replaced by a colonel who did not even have a university degree. Indignantly, he claimed “Por cierto que nuestra actividad en ciencia folklórica se anulará este año. No podré escribir una linea sobre folklore!” (In fact, our activity in the science of folklore will be suspended this year. I will no longer be allowed to write even one sentence on folklore!) He heartily thanked Paredes for inviting him to teach Folklore at the University of Texas, Austin, as a visiting scholar. In closing he adds:

No necesito decirte que mi reconocimiento por tu amistad no tiene límites. Has sido, demostrado serlo, un amigo incondicional. Mereces toda la felicidad en la tierra y sin duda Dios te recompensara ayudandote en tu lucha con tu hijita.21

(I don’t need to tell you that my appreciation of your friendship has no limits. You have been, you’ve shown yourself to be, an unconditional friend. You deserve all the


JAF 125_1 text.indd 83 12/16/11 2:24 PM


happiness in the world and without a doubt, God will reward you by helping you in your struggle with your daughter.)(Paredes Papers, box 59, folder 10)

One of the most touching relationships Paredes experienced was with Julián Cáceres Freyre (1916–99). Born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Cáceres was an extraordinarily well-trained scholar who devoted his life to the academic study of the folk traditions of his country. Cáceres taught in the departments of Historia del Folklore and His-toria del Arte in the Escuela Superior de Bellas Artes de la Universidad de la Plata. He also taught for the department of Arqueología Argentina y Americana en la Fac-ultad de Filosofía de la Universidad Católica Argentina and was a central 7gure in several important institutions, including the Museo Folklórico and the Instituto Na-cional de Antropología. And like Paredes, Caceres received numerous awards for his outstanding scholarly activities and contributions.22

,e nature of discourse in the extensive (over two hundred leaves) and intimate correspondence that Cáceres and Paredes maintained from 1960 to 1997 covered their professional activities and their personal lives, including their own health as well as that of their families. In a letter dated January 15, 1966, Paredes expressed his concern about the 37th International Congress of Americanists in Argentina, due to the fact that English would be the principle language of communication. Paredes viewed the use of English in a Latin American Conference as o+ensive and disrespect-ful. In one of the most poignant letters of the collection, dated August 6, 1997, Paredes responds to a letter regarding Cáceres’s suicide attempt a9er a serious bout of depres-sion he experienced (due to illness and politics). He writes:

Me apena que hayas sufrido tal caso se depresión que intentaste quitarte la vida. Y me alegro, por supuesto, que con ayuda de tu devoción lograste apartarte de tan funesto intento. Te diré que yo también he andado por el mismo camino. Cuando estaba recobrando de una penosa operación a consecuencia del cancer de la prósta-ta, intenté hacer lo mismo. Tocó que entró a mi recamara uno de mis hijos y se me pasó el momento.

(I am saddened that you experienced such an intense case of depression that you attempted to end your life. I am happy, of course, that you managed to overcome such an unfortunate attempt. I tell you that I too have been down that road. When I was recovering from a di8cult operation due to prostate cancer, I attempted the same thing. It happened that my son entered the room and the moment passed.)(Paredes Papers, box 59, folder 4)

As Paredes notes, ending his life was a “-eeting” thought that emerged in a moment of great di8culty and vulnerability. ,e signi7cant point here is that Paredes and Cacéres viewed each other as trusted con7dants to whom they could turn to for sup-port, understanding, and comfort. It must have been enormously gratifying for two such accomplished scholars to each have a friend with whom to share their most intimate thoughts without worrying about being judged or chastised. Paredes ends

JAF 125_1 text.indd 84 12/16/11 2:24 PM

his letter by stating that he, too, abandoned his academic activities and thus was “aislado de lo que pasa en el mundo” (isolated from what goes on in the world). It bears mentioning that Paredes also maintained lively correspondence with lead-ing North American folklore scholars who had a strong interest in Mexico, including Ralph Steele Boggs, Stanley Robe, Wayland Hand, ,omas Stanford, Joseph Hellmer, Henry Selby, and Bob Malina, among others. In his correspondence with his wife, Paredes noted regretfully that “gringos” were o9en nicer and more cooperative than Mexican scholars. He explained that he was sorry about “the attitudes of Mexican scholars in general around here. Mendoza is extremely nice but he would not intro-duce me to a single person” (November 15, 1962; Paredes Papers, box 1, folder 5).

Chicano Studies in Greater Mexico

Paredes devoted a great part of his time to working with scholars interested in Chi-cano Studies. In June 1970, Paredes founded and became 7rst director of the Center for Mexican American Studies (CMAS) at the University of Texas, Austin. Establish-ing the Center and the Mexican American Studies major, however, resulted in po-litical turmoil, and by 1972, Paredes resigned to protest the ways in which the admin-istration undermined, indeed, erased the program. He writes:

During the summer we set up the courses required for our program and arranged for their sta8ng. In the fall we registered ten students for the Ethnic Studies Major, Mexican-American concentration. All this was done with the knowledge and ap-proval of Dean James Roach. And now, during the spring semester, we are told that the program was 7led away, “by mistake” instead of being circulated among the faculty for approval; and therefore, it does not exist. I am very skeptical of the “mis-take” explanation, unless “mistake” is intended to mean “miscalculation” rather than “oversight.” (letter written to “Colleagues in Mexican-American Studies Program, Students and Other Interested Parties,” 1 February 1972; Paredes Papers, box 36, folder 2)

Nevertheless, Paredes, as usual continued to lead the way by working with scholars on both sides of the border to promote the study of Chicanos. According to Griswold del Castillo, during the Echeverría presidency (1970–6), Mexico began to take a seri-ous interest in and support the study of “la problemática chicana” (Griswold del Castillo 2002). As a result, various conferences focusing on Chicanos and Mexican immigrants in the United States emerged in Mexico during the 1970s and 1980s. During the period July 18–30, 1971, Paredes traveled to Mexico City with a group of Chicano scholars and students to attend a seminar on Chicano Studies hosted by the Facultad de Ciencias Politicas y Sociales at UNAM. ,e group included Antonia Castañeda, Pedro Castillo, Victor Nelson Cisernos, Juan Gómez Quiñones, José E. Limón, Teresa Melendez, Carlos Velez, and David Maciel.23 During this two-week visit, Paredes attended several lectures, delivered several papers, and visited various communities. For the Sociedad Folklórica de Mexico (Mexican Folklore Society), Paredes presented a talk for a series titled “Nuevos enfoques en el estudio del corrido”


JAF 125_1 text.indd 85 12/16/11 2:24 PM


(New Perspectives on the Study of the Corrido). He met Mexican anthropologists Angel Palerm, Arturo Warmen, Alfonso Villa Rojas, Luis Villoro, and musicologist Carmen Sordo Sori. On his visit to the Instituto de Investigación e Integración Social (79een miles outside of Oaxaca city), Paredes notes that he was “really taken by the place. ,ey are doing for the villages what we are trying to do for Chicanos” (letter to Amelia Paredes, 23 July 1971; Paredes Papers, box 1, folder 12). In another letter, he men-tions that one of the Chicano Students, Abel Amaya, rented a room from an Anglo woman in Mexico, but when she discovered that he was Mexican, she kicked him out! On July 27, Moedano took Paredes to present a talk titled “El choque cultural como tema del corrido fronterizo mexico-texano” (Cultural Con-ict as a ,eme in the Texas-Mexican Border Corrido). Re-ecting on this experience, he told Amelia that he was amazed by how “things I used to say ten or 79een years ago, received with polite tolerance, is now enthusiastically received by Chicanos and Mexicanos alike” (letter to Amelia Paredes, 27 July 1971; Paredes Papers, box 1, folder 12).

Conclusion

In the course of his academic career, Paredes mentored various scholars directly and indirectly, and stimulated groundbreaking ideas and approaches in scholarship. One of Paredes’s ongoing goals was to encourage scholars to pursue research and seriously engage scholars from Latin America. And indeed, many of us have done so. One no-table example is our session organizer, John McDowell, who for the past twenty-7ve years has studied the corrido in Mexico. McDowell notes: “It was Dr. Paredes who suggested that I travel to the Costa Chica in search of the living ballad, and that en-counter during the summer of 1972 le9 a permanent mark on me” (McDowell 2007). McDowell has also conducted research in Cuba, Ecuador, and Colombia. Drawing on his talent, training, experiences, and interpersonal skills, Paredes worked relentlessly throughout his life to bridge social, cultural, and political borders. During his life, Paredes received numerous tributes and honors for his scholarship and activism, but one of the most gratifying accomplishments for Paredes was to witness the proliferation of his foundational work.

Acknowledgments

I wish to thank Elena Nájera-Pérez, Roberto Nájera, Frances Terry, José Limón, Richard Flores, and Margo Gutiérrez for their invaluable support in writing this paper. I also appreciate the support of the Chicano/Latino Research Center at University of California, Santa Cruz for a faculty grant that sup-ported my research at the Benson Latin American Collection at the University of Texas in Austin, and to members of the Transnational Popular Cultures Research Cluster—Felicity Schae+er-Grabiel, Russell Rodríguez, Steve Nava, Pat Zavella, Marcia Ochoa, Susy Zepeda, Cecilia Rivas, Stuyvesant Bearns, and Xochitl Chavez—for their thoughtful critiques and suggestions. Finally, a special thanks to John McDow-ell for his editorial assistance.

JAF 125_1 text.indd 86 12/16/11 2:24 PM

Notes

1. West (1990:32, 33). 2. Américo Paredes graduated, summa cum laude, in 1951, completed his MA in English and Folklore Studies two years later, and in 1956, received his doctorate in those same 7elds at the University of Texas (UT) at Austin. In 1958, the English Department hired Paredes where he taught courses on lit-erature, creative writing, composition, and folklore. In 1966, he accepted a half-time appointment in the UT Anthropology Department. One year later, Paredes established the graduate Folklore major in the English and Anthropology departments and became the 7rst Director of the Center for Intercul-tural Studies in Folklore and Oral History. Paredes retired from full-time UT faculty status in 1984 but continued to teach for several years. 3. For a discussion of the “experimental moment,” see Marcus and Fischer (1986) and Cli+ord (1986). 4. For discussion on the concept of “blurred genres,” see Geertz (1980). 5. For more discussion of these concepts, see Franco (1982). 6. I elaborate on this point in another essay (Nájera-Ramírez 1999). For detailed discussions on this point, see Limón (1994), Rosaldo (1989), and Ramón Saldívar (2006). 7. In a personal email to me on 9 October 2009, Cli+ord stated, “Paredes certainly wasn’t on my radar screen when I wrote that Introduction (which would be around 1984, for a 1986 [sic] publication date). ,e 7rst work of his I read was the devastating essay on humor (and anthropologist’s literalism—not getting the joke) which Renato [Rosaldo] recommended to me. But when? A9er Writing Culture anyway. When José Limon was around UCSC, we talked about Paredes. But I’ve never really read his work with any seriousness, and it’s still in my peripheral vision.” 8. José Saldívar notes that Paredes was the 7rst Chicano to earn a PhD from the University of Texas at Austin (2000:193). 9. ,e Hispanic Recovery Project, directed by Nicholas Kanellos, is a project engaged in the recu-peration and publication of primary literary sources written by Hispanics in the geographic area that is now the United States, from the colonial period to 1960. In the enormous endeavor of recovering his-torical and literary texts, the Hispanic Literary Recovery Project has contributed to making visible alter-native literary and cultural practices for the Southwest, among other regions of the United States. ,ese have been crucial in a8rming and re-inscribing the presence of local/border resistance by an ethnic and linguistic community vis-à-vis an Anglo national/nationalist center. 10. See my 2001 article, “Haciendo Patria,” for more discussion on this topic. 11. At the University of California, Santa Cruz, my colleagues and I established the Chicano/Latino Research Center (CLRC) in 1994. ,e CLRC’s mission is to promote “cross-border perspectives linking the Americas” through interdisciplinary scholarly approaches, an approach very much inspired by the work of Dr. Américo Paredes. Committed to fostering dialogue among scholars across the Americas, the CLRC has become a major site for transdisciplinary and cross-border scholarship on Chicano and La-tino issues. In turn, this focus also led us to create one of the 7rst Latin American and Latino/a Studies Departments, a reframing that allows us to better capture the complex power dynamics within which cultural identities and expressions are embedded in the Americas. 12. He delivered the speech in Spanish, but I am using his English translation here. 13. Meacham writes, “I very much enjoyed your acceptance speech as well. You enlightened me about the attitudes towards Mexican-American in a way I needed to be. It wasn’t just a pro forma talk; you said some very important things” (letter to Paredes dated 10 December 1990; Paredes Papers, box 35, folder 2). 14. ,is letter is incorrectly dated “December 20, 1991” in the original. 15. In 1977, the president of the Comité de Folklore (Instituto Panamericano de Geografía e Historia) invited Paredes to Ecuador for a meeting of leading folklorists on the American continent, but in the end, he could not attend (due to health issues), so Richard Bauman went in his place. 16. ,e corrido is one of the most studied genres of Greater Mexico. For some excellent examples of the scholarship on the origins of the corrido, readers may consult Duvalier (1937), Simmons (1957), Serrano Martínez (1963), Gabriel Saldívar (1934), María y Campos (1962), and Hernández (2008). 17. For more details on the debate, see Paredes (1963).


JAF 125_1 text.indd 87 12/16/11 2:24 PM


18. Cosío Villegas had a career in public service, which began in 1925 working under José Vasconce-los at the Ministry of Education. In 1934, he founded the Fondo de Cultura Económica, which became one of the most respected academic publishing houses in the Spanish-speaking world. During the 1930s, he also founded the magazine Trimestre Económico, and he founded and edited Historia Mexicana and Foro Internacional, a journal on international relations. He helped to establish the Casa de España, for Spanish intellectuals who le9 Spain during the Civil War, which later became the Colegio de México, one of the principal social science research centers in Latin America. Cosío Villegas combined government service with teaching at the National Preparatory School, the National University, and the Colegio de México in Mexico City, as well as at the Central University of Madrid in Spain and at the University of Texas in Austin. For a good overview of Cosío Villegas’s career and accomplishments, see Ross (1977). 19. See Frances Gillmor (1961) and Robe (1967) for earlier studies. See Loza (1990) for a review of the 7eld of ethnomusicology in Mexico. 20. ,e lukewarm, professional relationship he had with Dannemann from 1962 to 1981 re-ects an-other side to the encounters Paredes experienced. Paredes wrote the preface to Manuel Dannemann Rothstein’s Bibliografía del Folklore Chileno, 1952–1965 (Austin: Center for Intercultural Studies in Folk-lore and Oral History, University of Texas at Austin, 1970). Much of their correspondence focused on a second project that Paredes planned, to help him publish on Latin American Folkore theory, but in the end, it was published by the Consejo Nacional de la Cultura (CONAC) in Caracas, Venezuela. 21. Paredes’s youngest daughter, Julie, was diagnosed with brain damage at the age of twenty-two months due to an automobile accident that the family experienced when Amelia was 7ve months pregnant (for more details, see López Morín 2006:62). 22. For more details, please see Luna (2008). 23. Other scholars participating in the conference included Abel Amaya, Guillermo Hernández, Alma Canales, Reynaldo Macias, Arturo Pacheco, and Isabelle Navar. For a complete listing, see “Seminario Sobre Estudios Chicanos” 1971 (Paredes Papers, box 6, folder 1).

References Cited

Bauman, Richard. 1993. Introduction to Folklore and Culture on the Texas-Mexican Border, by Américo Paredes, ed. Richard Bauman, pp. ix–xxiii. Austin: Center for Mexican American Studies, University of Texas Press.

Calderon, Hector, and José López Morín. 2000. Interview with Américo Paredes. Nepantla: Views from South 1(1):197–228.

Chamorro, Arturo, and Axel Ramírez. 1983. Sabiduría popular: Memorias de la primera Mesa Redonda de Folklore y Etnomusicología, celebrado en Zamora, Michoacan 16–19 junio, 1982, ed. Arturo Chamar-ro. Zamora, Mexico: Colegio de Michoacan.

Cli+ord, James. 1986. Introduction: Partial Truths. Writing Culture: "e Poetics and Politics of Ethnogra-phy, ed. James Cli+ord and George Marcus, pp. 1–26. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Duvalier, Armand. 1937. Romance y corrido. Pt. 1, 2, and 3. Crisol: Revista de crítica 15 (84): 35–43; (87): 8–16; (88): 35–41.

Encyclopedia of World Biography. 2004. Daniel Cosío Villegas. Encyclopedia.com. http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G2–3404701532.html.

Franco, Jean. 1982. What’s in a Name? Popular Culture ,eories and ,eir Limitations. Studies in Latin American Popular Culture 1:5–14.

Geertz, Cli+ord. 1980. Blurred Genres: ,e Re7guration of Social ,ought. American Scholar 29(2):165–79.

Gillmor, Frances. 1961. Organization of Folklore Study in Mexico. Journal of American Folklore 74(294):383–90.

Griswold del Castillo, Richard. 2002. Mexican Intellectuals’ Perception of Mexican Americans and Chi-canos, 1920-present. Aztlán 27(2):33–74.

Haraway, Donna. 1988. Situated Knowledges: ,e Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective. Feminist Studies 14(3):575–99.

JAF 125_1 text.indd 88 12/16/11 2:24 PM

Hernández, Guillermo. 2008. El estudio del corrido en los albores del siglo XXI. Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies 33(2):185–206.

Instituto Latinoamericano de la Comunicación Educativa. 2004. Daniel Cosío Villegas. Ensayos Biográ-!cos: Personajes Mexicanos Literatos. Red Escolar. http://www.redescolar.ilce.edu.mx/redescolar/ publicaciones/publi_quepaso/danielcosio.htm.

Klahn, Norma. 2003. Literary (Re)Mappings: Autobiographical (Dis)Placements by Chicana Writers. In Chicana Feminisms: A Critical Reader, ed. Gabriela F. Arredondo, Aída Hurtado, Norma Klahn, Olga Nájera-Ramírez, and Patricia Zavella, pp. 114–45. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Limón, Jose E. 1994. Dancing with the Devil: Society and Cultural Poetics in Mexican-American South Texas. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.

López Morín, José. 2006. "e Legacy of Américo Paredes. College Station: Texas A&M University Press.Loza, Steven. 1990. Contemporary Ethnomusicology. Latin American Music Review/Revista de Música

Latinoamericana 12(2):202–50.Luna, Ricardo Mercado. 2008. Referencia a Julián Cáceres Freyre. Colección la Ciudad de los Naranjos.

Biblioteca Mariano Mareno. http://www.bmm.org.ar/libros/libro5.html.Marcus, George E., and Michael M. J. Fischer. 1986. Anthropology as Cultural Critique: An Experimental

Movement in the Human Sciences. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.María y Campos, Armando de. 1962. La revolución mexicana a través de sus corridos populares. 2 vols.

Mexico: Instituto Nacional de Estudios Históricos de la Revolución Mexicana.McDowell, John Holmes. 2007. Folklore of Mexico and Beyond. http://www.indiana.edu/~jmcd/

greater%20mexico.htm.Nájera-Ramírez, Olga. 1994. Engendering Nationalism: Identity, Discourse, and the Mexican Charro.

Anthropological Quarterly 67(1):1–14.———. 1999. Of Fieldwork, Folklore, and Festival: Personal Encounters. Journal of American Folklore

112(444):183–99.———. 2001. Haciendo Patria: La Charreada and the Formation of a Transnational Identity. In Transna-

tional Latino Communities: Politics, Processes, and Culture, ed. Carlos Velez-Ibanez, Anna Sampaio, and Manolo González-Estay, pp. 167–80. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Little7eld.

Paredes, Américo. Papers. Benson Latin American Collection, University of Texas Libraries, Austin.———. 1960. Luis Inclán: First of the Cowboy Writers. American Quarterly 12(1):55–70.———. 1963. ,e Ancestry of Mexican Corridos: A Matter of De7nitions. Journal of American Folklore

76(301):231–5.———. 1965. Review of Lírica Narrativa: El Corrido. Journal of American Folklore 78(310):364–5.———. 1967. Estados Unidos, México y el machismo. Journal of Inter-American Studies 9(1):65–84.———. 1969. Concepts about Folklore in Latin America and in the United States. Journal of the Folklore

Institute 6(1–2):20–38.———. 1971. Folktales of Mexico. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.———. 1976. A Texas Mexican Cancionero: Folksongs of the Lower Border. Urbana: University of Illinois

Press.———. 1977. On Ethnographic Work among Minority Groups: A Folklorist’s Perspective. New Scholar

6:1–32.———. 1979. ,e Folkbase of Chicano Literature. In Modern Chicano Writers: A Collection of Critical

Essays, ed. Joseph Sommers and Tomás Ybarra-Frausto, pp. 4–17. Englewood Cli+s, NJ: Prentice Hall.———. 1982. Folklore, Lo Mexicano, and Proverbs. Aztlán 13(1–2):1–11.———. 1993. Folklore and Culture on the Texas-Mexican Border, ed. Richard Bauman. Austin: Center for

Mexican American Studies, University of Texas Press.Rabassa, Clementine. 1979. ,e Multiple Literary Traditions of Mi Tío Atahualpa. Latin American Liter-

ary Review 6(5):33–8.Rivera, Tomas. 1986. Letters to Luis Leal, Américo Paredes, and Rolando Hinojosa. Bilingual Review/

Revista Bilingue 13(1–2):48–51.Robe, Stanley. 1967. Contemporary Trends in Folklore Research. Latin American Research Review 2(2):26–

54.Rosaldo, Renato. 1989. Culture and Truth: "e Remaking of Social Analysis. Boston: Beacon.


JAF 125_1 text.indd 89 12/16/11 2:24 PM


Ross, Stanley. 1977. Daniel Cosío Villegas (1889–1976). Hispanic American Historical Review 57(1):92–103.Saldívar, Gabriel. 1934. Historia de la música en México. México: Secretaría de Educación Pública.Saldívar, José David. 2000. ,e Location of Américo Paredes’s Border ,inking. Nepantla: Views from

South 1(1):191–5.Saldívar, Ramón. 2006. "e Borderlands of Culture: Américo Paredes and the Transnational Imaginary.

Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Serrano Martínez, Celedonio. 1963. El corrido mexicano no deriva del romance español. México: Centro

Cultural Guerrerense.Simmons, Merle. 1957. "e Mexican Corrido as a Source for Interpretative Study of Modern México (1870–

1950). Bloomington: Indiana University Press.West, Cornel. 1990. ,e New Cultural Politics of Di+erence. In Out "ere: Marginalization and Contem-

porary Culture, ed. Russell Ferguson, Martha Gever, Trinh T. Minh-Ha, and Cornel West, pp. 19–36. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Zavella, Patricia. 1993. Feminist Insider Dilemmas: Constructing Ethnic Identity with “Chicana” Infor-mants. Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies 13(3):53–76.

JAF 125_1 text.indd 90 12/16/11 2:24 PM

Encaminándonos: Américo Paredes as aa Guiding Force in Transcending Borders

Documents

Encaminándonos: Américo Paredes as aa Guiding Force in Transcending Borders